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Wall of Sound

This article is about Phil Spector's music production formula. It is not to be confused with the generic term "wall of sound", used to describe high volume, saturation, or distortion in music. For more details on that topic, see Noise music or Noise in music. For other uses, see Wall of Sound (disambiguation).

Critical shorthand usually reduces the Wall of Sound inaccurately to a maximum of noise.[4] Levine recalled how "other engineers" mistakenly thought that the process was "turning up all the faders to get full saturation, but all that achieved was distortion."[3] In order to attain the Wall of Sound, Spector's arrangements called for large ensembles (including some instruments not generally used for ensemble playing, such as electric and acoustic guitars), with multiple instruments doubling and even tripling many of the parts to create a fuller, richer tone.[5] For example, Spector would often duplicate a part played by an acoustic piano with an electric piano and a harpsichord.[6] Mixed well enough, the three instruments would then be indistinguishable to the listener.[6][7] Additionally, Spector incorporated an array of orchestral instruments (strings, woodwind, brass and percussion) not previously associated with youth-oriented pop music. Reverb from an echo chamber was also highlighted for additional texture. He characterized his methods as "a Wagnerian approach to rock & roll: little symphonies for the kids".[8]

The intricacies of the technique were unprecedented in the field of sound production for popular music.[3] Session guitarist Barney Kessel noted how "terribly simple" it was, however, "the way [Spector] recorded and miked it, they’d diffuse it so that you couldn't pick out any one instrument. Techniques like distortion and echo were not new, but Phil came along and took these to make sounds that had not been used in the past. I thought it was ingenious."[6] According to Beach Boys leader Brian Wilson, who used the formula extensively: "In the '40s and '50s, arrangements were considered 'OK here, listen to that French horn' or 'listen to this string section now.' It was all a definite sound. There weren't combinations of sound, and with the advent of Phil Spector, we find sound combinations, which—scientifically speaking—is a brilliant aspect of sound production."[7]

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We were working on the transparency of music; that was the Teddy Bears sound: you had a lot of air moving around, notes being played in the air but not directly into the mics. Then, when we sent it all into the chamber, this air effect is what was heard—all the notes jumbled and fuzzy. This is what we recorded—not the notes. The chamber.

During the mid-1950s, Spector worked with Brill Building songwriters Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller during a period where they sought a fuller sound by the use of excessive instrumentation, using up to five electric guitars and four percussionists.[1] This was later to evolve into Spector's Wall of Sound, which Leiber and Stoller consider to be very distinct from what they were doing, stating: "Phil was the first one to use multiple drum kits, three pianos and so on. We went for much more clarity in terms of instrumental colors, and he deliberately blended everything into a kind of mulch. He definitely had a different point of view."[1] Spector's first production was the self-penned 1957 single "Don't You Worry My Little Pet", performed with his group the Teddy Bears. The recording was achieved by taking a demo tape of the song and playing it back over the studio's speaker system in order to overdub another performance over it.[10] The end product was a cacophony, with stacked harmony vocals that could not be heard clearly.[11] He would spend the next several years further developing this unorthodox method of recording.

The process is almost the same for most of Spector's recordings, with Spector starting by rehearsing the assembled musicians for several hours before recording. The backing track was performed live and recorded monaurally; a bass drum overdub on "Da Doo Ron Ron" was the exception to the rule.[3] Songwriter Jeff Barry, who worked extensively with Spector, described the Wall of Sound as "by and large…a formula arrangement" with "four or five guitars…two basses in fifths, with the same type of line…strings…six or seven horns adding the little punches…[and] percussion instruments—the little bells, the shakers, the tambourines".[8][13]

Bob B. Soxx & the Blue Jeans' version of "Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah" formed the basis of Spector and Levine's future mixing practices, almost never straying from the formula it established.[3] For the recording of "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'", engineer Larry Levine described the process thus: they started by recording four acoustic guitars, playing eight bars over and over again, changing the figure if necessary until Spector thought it ready. They then added the pianos, of which there were three, and if they didn't work together, Spector would start again with the guitars. This is followed by three basses, the horns (two trumpets, two trombones, and three saxophones), then finally the drums. The vocals were then added with Bill Medley and Bobby Hatfield singing into separate microphones, and backing vocals supplied by the Blossoms and other singers.[3][14]

Daniel Lanois recounted a situation during the recording of the track "Goodbye" from Emmylou Harris's Wrecking Ball: "We put a huge amount of compression on the piano and the mandoguitar, and it turned into this fantastic, chimey harmonic instrument. We almost got the old Spector '60s sound, not by layering, but by really compressing what was already there between the melodic events happening between these two instruments."[5] Nonetheless, layering identical instrumental parts remained an integral component of many of Spector's productions, as session musician Barney Kessel recalled:

There was a lot of weight on each part.…The three pianos were different, one electric, one not, one harpsichord, and they would all play the same thing and it would all be swimming around like it was all down a well. Musically, it was terribly simple, but the way he recorded and miked it, they’d diffuse it so that you couldn't pick any one instrument out. Techniques like distortion and echo were not new, but Phil came along and took these to make sounds that had not been used in the past. I thought it was ingenious.[6]

All early Wall of Sound recordings were made with a three-track Ampex 350 tape recorder.[3] Levine explained that during mixing, "I [would] record the same thing on two of the [Ampex machine's] three tracks just to reinforce the sound, and then I would erase one of those and replace it with the voice. The console had a very limited equalizer for each input … That was basically it in terms of effects, aside from the two echo chambers that were also there, of course, directly behind the control room."[3]

Microphones in the recording studio captured the musicians' performance, which was then transmitted to an echo chamber—a basement room fitted with speakers and microphones. The signal from the studio was played through the speakers and reverberated throughout the room before being picked up by the microphones. The echo-laden sound was then channeled back to the control room, where it was recorded on tape. The natural reverberation and echo from the hard walls of the echo chamber gave Spector's productions their distinctive quality and resulted in a rich, complex sound that, when played on AM radio, had a texture rarely heard in musical recordings. Jeff Barry noted, "Phil used his own formula for echo, and some overtone arrangements with the strings."[8]

During the mixing for "Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah", Spector turned off the track designated for electric guitar (played on this occasion by Billy Strange). However, the sound of the guitar could still be heard spilling onto other microphones in the room, creating a ghostly ambiance that obscured the instrument. In reference to this nuance of the song's recording, music professor Albin Zak has written:

It was at this moment that the complex of relationships among all the layers and aspects of the sonic texture came together to bring the desired image into focus. As long as Strange’s unmiked guitar plugs away as one of the layered timbral characters that make up the track’s rhythmic groove, it is simply one strand among many in a texture whose timbres sound more like impressionistic allusions to instruments than representations. But the guitar has a latency about it, a potential. Because it has no microphone of its own, it effectively inhabits a different ambient space from the rest of the track. As it chugs along in its accompanying role, it forms a connection with a parallel sound world of which we are, for the moment, unaware. Indeed, we would never know of the secondary ambient layer were it not for the fact that this guitar is the one that takes the solo. As it steps out of the groove texture and asserts its individuality, a doorway opens to an entirely other place in the track. It becomes quite clear that this guitar inhabits a world all its own, which has been before us from the beginning yet has somehow gone unnoticed.[15]

Levine disliked Spector's penchant for mic bleeding, accordingly: "I never wanted all the bleed between instruments — I had it, but I never wanted it — and since I had to live with it, that meant manipulating other things to lessen the effect; bringing the guitars up just a hair and the drums down just a hair so that it didn't sound like it was bleeding."[3] In order to offset the mixing problems percussion leakage caused, he applied a minimal number of microphones to the drum kits, using Neumann U67s overhead and RCA 77s on the kick to establish a feeling of presence.[3]

According to Zak: "Aside from the issues of retail and radio exposure, mono recordings represented an aesthetic frame for musicians and producers, who had grown up with them."[16] Despite the trend towards multi-channel recording, Spector was vehemently opposed to stereo releases, claiming that it took control of the record's sound away from the producer in favor of the listener, resulting in an infringement of the Wall of Sound's carefully balanced combination of sonic textures as they were meant to be heard.[17] Brian Wilson agreed, stating: "I look at sound like a painting, you have a balance and the balance is conceived in your mind. You finish the sound, dub it down, and you’ve stamped out a picture of your balance with the mono dubdown. But in stereo, you leave that dubdown to the listener—to his speaker placement and speaker balance. It just doesn't seem complete to me."[18]

It has been inaccurately suggested in critical shorthand that Spector's "wall of sound" filled every second with a maximum of noise. Biographer David Hinckley wrote that the Wall of Sound was flexible, more complex, and more subtle, elaborating:

Its components included an R&B-derived rhythm section, generous echo and prominent choruses blending percussion, strings, saxophones and human voices. But equally important were its open spaces, some achieved by physical breaks (the pauses between the thunder in "Be My Baby" or "Baby, I Love You") and some by simply letting the music breathe in the studio. He also knew when to clear a path, as he does for the sax interlude and [Darlene] Love's vocal in "(Today I Met) The Boy I'm Gonna Marry".[4]

The Wall of Sound has been contrasted with "the standard pop mix of foregrounded solo vocal and balanced, blended backing" as well as the airy mixes typical of reggae and funk.[20] Jeff Barry said: "[Spector] buried the lead and he cannot stop himself from doing that … if you listen to his records in sequence, the lead goes further and further in and to me what he is saying is, 'It is not the song... just listen to those strings. I want more musicians, it's me.'"[21] Musicologist Richard Middleton wrote: "This can be contrasted with the open spaces and more equal lines of typical funk and reggae textures [for example], which seem to invite [listeners] to insert [themselves] in those spaces and actively participate."[20] Closer reflection reveals that the Wall of Sound was compatible with, even supportive of, vocal protagonism. Such virtuosity was ultimately serving of Spector's own agenda—The Righteous Brothers' vocal prowess provided him a "secure and prosperous headrest", such as in Bobby Hatfield's rendering of "Unchained Melody".[22]

"Be My Baby", a 1963 hit single for The Ronettes produced and co-written by Spector, is widely regarded as one of the finest pop tunes of all time, and one of the quintessential Spector productions.[25]

The Wall of Sound forms the foundation of Phil Spector's recordings, in general. However, certain records are considered to have epitomized its use. The Ronettes' version of "Sleigh Ride" used the effect heavily. Another prominent example of the Wall of Sound was "Da Doo Ron Ron" by The Crystals.[3] Spector himself is quoted as believing his production of Ike and Tina Turner's "River Deep, Mountain High" to be the summit of his Wall of Sound productions,[26] and this sentiment has been echoed by George Harrison, who called it "a perfect record from start to finish".[27] Spector later produced his album All Things Must Pass (1970).

Perhaps Phil Spector's most infamous use of his production techniques was on the Let It Be album. Spector was brought in to salvage the incomplete Let It Be, an album abandoned by The Beatles, performances from which had already appeared in several bootleg versions when the sessions were still referred to as Get Back. "The Long and Winding Road", "I Me Mine", and "Across the Universe" are often singled out by Paul McCartney, and others, as those tracks receiving the greatest amount of post-production work. The modified treatment (often misrepresented as a Wall of Sound, although neither Spector nor the Beatles used this phrase to refer to the production) and other overdubs proved controversial among fans and The Beatles themselves. Eventually, in 2003, Let It Be... Naked was released, an authorized version without Spector's additions.[citation needed]

Outside of Spector's own songs, the most recognizable example of the "Wall of Sound" is heard on many classic hits recorded by The Beach Boys (e.g., "God Only Knows", "Wouldn't It Be Nice"—and especially, the psychedelic "pocket symphony" of "Good Vibrations"), for which Brian Wilson used a similar recording technique, especially during the Pet Sounds and Smile eras of the band.[28] Wilson considers Pet Sounds to be a concept album centered around interpretations of Phil Spector's recording methods.[7] Author Domenic Priore observed, "The Ronettes had sung a dynamic version of The Students' 1961 hit 'I'm So Young', and Wilson went right for it, but took the Wall of Sound in a different direction. Where Phil would go for total effect by bringing the music to the edge of cacophony – and therefore rocking to the tenth power – Brian seemed to prefer audio clarity. His production method was to spread out the sound and arrangement, giving the music a more lush, comfortable feel.[29]

According to Larry Levine, "Brian was one of the few people in the music business Phil respected. There was a mutual respect. Brian might say that he learned how to produce from watching Phil, but the truth is, he was already producing records before he observed Phil. He just wasn't getting credit for it, something that in the early days, I remember really used to make Phil angry. Phil would tell anybody who listened that Brian was one of the great producers."[30]

In 1973, British band Wizzard revived the Wall of Sound in three of their hits "See My Baby Jive", "Angel Fingers" and "I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday".[32]Bruce Springsteen would also emulate the Wall of Sound in his recording of "Born to Run" (1975).[32]

Spector's Wall of Sound is distinct from what's typically characterized as a "wall of sound", according to author Matthew Bannister. During the 1980s, "Jangle and drone plus reverberation create[d] a contemporary equivalent of Spector's 'Wall of Sound' — a massive, ringing, cavernous noise and a device used by many indie groups: Flying Nun, from Sneaky Feelings' Send You to Straitjacket Fits and the JPS Experience". He cites 1960s psychedelic and garage rock such as the Byrds' "Eight Miles High" (1966) as a primary musical influence on the movement.[33]